St. Michaels Museum (409 St. Mary’s Square)

On the opposite side of Chestnut Street from the John W Blades house is the Saint Michaels Museum, an assemblage of historic structures moved to the site of the former Saint Michaels High School and facing Saint Mary’s Square, which was laid out to be a central public space for the town. The small dwelling to the left was the home of free Black laborers, the Cheney brothers, which they built about 1850. In the center is the Jeremiah Sewell House, built about 1840 by oysterman Jeremiah Sewell reusing heavy timbers from a failed Harrison Steam Mill.

As you proceed ahead and turn left on Water Street, the houses on your right nearly all had small oyster shucking houses in their backyards lining the Saint Michaels harbor during the oyster boom of the 1870s and 1880s.